oh No My Newest Hyperfixation

again, i am a fanartist. i am also a fanfic writer, and i started on tumblr, so i know that bc of my experiences, im gonna be a lot less? affected? i guess by limited interactions from ccs. on tumblr, there’s no way you're gonna get noticed by ccs (which is a perk, sometimes) and when you’re a fanfic writer you really dont even ask for positive attention you really just want people to stop giving you negative attention haha

that being said, i understand people’s frustration with dream bc he hasn’t been interacting as much with art. i maintain that this frustration should be more directed to the twitter algorithm, tho. 

(who’s ready for some hypothetical math?)

let’s say that an artist takes 1 hour to make one piece of art. this is honestly, really really dang fast, many detailed full pieces of art take 2-3 hours at least, and many others will take 8, 10, or even more. but we’re gonna give the artist the benefit of the doubt anyways and say that they take 1 hour. 

Now how about stan accounts? Let’s say that they make 5 posts an hour. This is honestly, probably a low ball! Each post takes a few seconds to make, a lot of the time, and plenty of accounts are much more active than posting every 12 minutes. But we’re gonna, again, make this situation the best possible situation for the artist, and let’s say that the stan account only posts 5 times an hour. Even with this situation, for each post that the artist makes, assuming that they @ dream every time, he’s going to see 5 posts by a stan account.

Artists also tend to be very outnumbered on twitter, so let’s say for every artist, there are 10 stan accounts. Let’s assume that they also make 5 posts an hour. So for each artist that shows up in dream’s notifications, he’s going to see 50 posts by stan accounts.

But artists get fatigued! We’re going to go with a high estimate again with 4 fully finished pieces a day. (this is insane! keep in mind, even if we’re lowballing the time put in, this is still 4 hours a day of art. for most artists, their fully finished pieces take 2, 3, 4 hours. four pieces a day would put them at 8-16 hours of work!!). on the other hand, stan account posts take a lot less time to make, and are much less likely to make them fatigued. Therefore, we can assume that the stan accounts, posting 5 times an hour, can stay active for 8 hours a day. 

What does this put us at? For every post that an artist makes with a fully finished piece of art, dream is seeing 100 notifications from stan accounts. This doesn’t even include how dream is more likely to respond to those who interact with his tweets, which is nigh impossible for artists because they cannot make a piece of art to reply to his posts in the ~5 minutes that he will look at the replies to the post he posts. I also made this situation the best possible situation for the artist. In reality, I can only make about one fully finished piece a day, and more often will go two or three days without posting. There are also far more stan accounts than artists, stan accounts are often active for longer than 8 hours and post more than once every 12 minutes. The real ratio might be more like 1 in 200, 300, 400. Just because of the algorithm, artists are pretty dang screwed.

Dream has been making efforts to help with this, such as through the dreamfanart tag! this manages to filter out all of the stan accounts, and when fan artists use it he’s going to be much more likely to see the art. even so, the amount of artists he will actually interact with is very low. it’s just the way the website works, when his notifications are definitely constantly flooded, when artists are so easily drowned out by the literal army of stan accounts on twitter. in the end, it’s really up to artists to hype each other up and support each other. My best advice for if you want more appreciation and interaction are:

1. use the dreamfanart tag! again, this manages to filter out most of the stan account activity, and will help other people to find your art if you’re a relatively new artist

2. self advertise! retweet your own art, reply with your art under people’s posts hyping up artists, dont be afraid to put yourself out there. if you want your voice to be heard in the sound of all these other accounts, you have to be loud!

3. interact with other artists! by helping and hyping up other artists, theyre more likely to do so with you. artists are a pretty small population of dttwt, and we have to support each other to get anywhere. retweet, like, reply to people’s art. follow dttwt artists and support them! 

4. love your art for what you’ve already done. this is the hardest part, especially when you put hours into a piece and see it get like, less than 10 likes. i have been there, and it sucks. but your art is Good. you put your time, effort, and heart into that, and regardless of how other people respond, you did good and im proud of you. <3

a last note: i have to admit, i wasn't the most comfortable with all of the dttwt artists bullying and venting their frustrations at dream, specifically, for “ignoring” fan artists. could he have interacted more? definitely. but i dont think he was by any means trying to “ignore” fan artists. his notifications are swamped, his tl is swamped. twitter works in a way where a day or two after you make a piece of art, it’s pretty much buried and lost forever. last night he was just trying to do a good thing by shouting out some small accounts in the community. fan artists, i am a part of you, and i feel your pain and frustration, but please don’t speak out of a place of anger. it’s far too easy to say something, publicly, that you’ll regret. i do not condone any of the hate sent anywhere, especially to fan artists last night, but let’s all remember to be kind and build each other up, ok? We’re all in this together, ccs, stan accounts, fan artists. we’re all doing this because we love the dteam and the content they make. don’t lose sight of why we’re here in the first place <3